CASE STUDY: How to Stay Focused and Productive

CASE STUDY: How to Stay Focused and Productive
in the Fourth Quarter
By Todd Cohen
There’s always a lot to cover as the end of the year approaches,
especially for your wealthiest clients. Here’s how one advisor
profitably uses an end-of-year checklist with clients.
Veteran advisor Debbie Taylor was finding
that fourth-quarter client meetings could be
a slog, both for herself and her clients.
“Too often, we would get bogged down
in minutia that shouldn’t take up so much
time,” says Taylor, an attorney and certified
public accountant who is principal of Taylor
Financial Group, a wealth management firm
in Franklin Lakes, N.J. So she began giving
clients an end-of-the-year checklist to help
make those meetings more focused and
productive.
Taylor found that using a checklist not only
focused client meetings, adding value to the
clients and the firm alike, but it also led to
additional conversations to address client
needs, and greater involvement in helping to
find solutions to address those needs, deeper
long-term relationships, and new revenue.
Challenge: Addressing clients’ year-end
investment and planning needs
Taylor says she struggles each year with
finding ways to make sure “we cover all the
important planning topics with clients at
year-end.”
Those topics can range from tax planning
and insurance to retirement planning and
estate planning.
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“Clients’ needs are diverse across a variety
of topics,” she says. “Remembering them
all—especially in the midst of a meeting
where other conversations can easily take
precedence over year-end planning items—
has been an increasingly difficult challenge
to overcome.”
And in the fourth quarter last year, with the
federal government’s impending “fiscal cliff”
looming, Taylor says, she was “overcome
with questions and planning discussions
about the impact that the combination of
higher taxes and lower government spending
would have on clients.
“This compounded our problem of keeping
on task with year-end planning items,” she
says.
Solution: Give clients a checklist, then follow up
on key issues
To make sure client meetings were focused,
on-task, and productive, Taylor began using
the Last-Chance Financial Planning
Checklist from Horsesmouth. (You could
also create your own.)
Designed to take only three minutes to
complete, the Checklist asks clients to
look at financial issues in eight categories
that might affect them, including taxes,
retirement, investments, insurance, health,
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family, milestones, and changes.
Clients simply can check the issues in
each category that relate to them. Under
“changes,” for example, clients can check
whether they changed jobs, got married, or
completed a divorce, to name just a few.
Taylor says she now uses the Checklist yearround “to touch and guide discussion with
clients.”
Step 1: Set a clear agenda for client meetings
Two days before each meeting, Taylor
provides clients with an agenda, changing
the planning theme on the agenda every
quarter “to keep meetings fresh and not
overwhelm our clients with too many
planning items.”
The agenda covers basic topics, including
whether the client’s profile and asset
allocation on file at the firm are up to date.
The agenda also includes whether any
“open activities” need to be discussed at the
meeting.
The bulk of the meeting, Taylor says, focuses
on discussions about asset allocation,
performance, and any “open items on the
client’s mind.”
Step 2: Give clients Last-Chance Planning
Checklist with meeting agenda
Last year, in addition to their meeting
agendas, Taylor gave clients at their meetings
the Last-Chance Financial Planning
Checklist.
Because the Checklist was “something
different,” she says, it “immediately got their
attention.”
It also allowed her firm to “refocus our
conversations with clients,” she says. “We are
sometimes guilty of focusing too much on
details such as recent performance or when
a certain manager underperformed last
quarter. The Checklist helped us and our
clients focus on the bigger picture: Are we
meeting our clients’ long-term goals?”
Step 3: Distribute hard copy of the Checklist to
clients
In addition to giving clients the Checklist
with their meeting agendas when they
actually met, Taylor distributed hard copies
of the Checklist to them through a mass
mailing in late fall. (Other advisors send their
checklists earlier in the fall.)
“While email remains our preferred method
of communicating with our clients, we still
rely on mailing our clients hard copies of
communications that we deem extremely
important,” she says. “An email can easily be
dismissed if clients do not think it is a priority
or addressing an issue that is top of mind.”
“We found that this additional
communication via hard copy was very
effective with clients,” Taylor says. “It
prompted many phone calls and questions
that led to great conversations on a variety
of topics” ranging from making retirement
contributions to estate planning.
Results
Taylor says the Checklist’s greatest value
for her clients and firm may be that it has
“allowed us to refocus on the big picture and
take a step back from our normal routine to
include some broader planning items.”
That, she says, “is really where our firm is able
to add value and prove our worth to our client
base.”
During the then-pending fiscal-cliff crisis, for
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example, the firm fielded a lot of questions
about estate planning. Those discussions
with clients led to referrals by the firm to its
preferred estate planning attorney.
“We pride ourselves on having these
relationships with premier professionals, as
it elevates the all-around service we can give
to clients and allows us to work closely with
clients’ other professionals and drive those
processes,” Taylor says.
The Checklist “enabled us to have more
planning conversations with our clients,” she
says, and those conversations in turn “allowed
us to add value and build our professional
relationships.”
Return on investment
With advisory relationships providing the
main source of revenue for Taylor Financial
Group, “we pride ourselves on being full
service,” Taylor says.
And the Checklist, she says, sparked a
number of conversations about life insurance
that led to additional conversations about
long-term care insurance and disability
insurance.
“Not only did we do the right thing for our
clients,” she says, but those conversations
generated an estimated $15,000 to $20,000
in additional revenue in the first and second
quarters of 2013, “providing a great kick-start
to our year.”
Using the Last-Chance Financial Planning
Checklist provides a way to “reach out to
clients on an annual basis,” Taylor says. “Not
only is it a comprehensive resource to start
conversations on year-end planning, but it
also provides a great start to conversations
with new clients and prospects throughout
the year.”
The Checklist also has provided an
opportunity to generate additional revenue
from existing clients throughout the year.
“It’s paid for itself many times over,” she says.
“We will continue to use it year-round as a
comprehensive source both for us and our
clients going forward.”
Todd Cohen is a freelance writer based in
Raleigh, North Carolina.
All those conversations led the firm to initiate
three applications for life insurance and one
for disability insurance, and to begin further
discussions about long-term care that Taylor
believes will lead to future applications.
Order the Last-Chance Financial Planning Checklist Campaign Today!
Online: www.horsesmouth.com/lastchance or
Call: (888) 336-6884 ext. 1
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